this post was submitted on 28 Feb 2024
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misleading headline. The judge was sent a tainted envelope, he did not send the envelope.
I wouldn't have interpreted as the judge being the sender.
That's how I interpreted it. There are many ways to write that which completely avoid confusion, but they chose the only way that allows that confusion.
I mean, the core of the sentence—if it were normal English and not newspaper headline English—is “judge sent envelope.” Their copy editor can and should do better.
I interpreted your interpretation differently
As I've said for years, English is a shit language.
Means Bob mailed it to someone
Means Bob received it.
We still keep headlines short, so the "was" gets dropped, and we're left with an ambiguous sentence that literally means the opposite of what context clues tell us it means.
It makes sense when you realize headlines start out as full sentences but then get trimmed down as short as possible.
@davel is right though.
Envelope With White Powder Sent To Judge In Trump Civil Fraud Case, Source Says
Exact same length and unambiguous.
Headlinese
Yeah, it's all shit our brains account for like 99% of the time so we don't even realize it.
If you don't learn it when your little, it's always going to be weird.
But if people stop to think about it, most can't explain why it still makes sense.